You're listening to an Airwave Media Podcast. Angie and I have been doing the All Creatures Podcast for eight years, and over that time, I've come to listen, obviously, and... Become a podcast fanatic like you. And obviously in most of our podcast feeds, we have multiple podcasts that.
we download and listen to each week. And here's one I suggest you add to your podcast stream, and that is Curiosity Weekly from Discovery. The hosts are making sense of some of the biggest questions and ideas shaping our world. As a scientist... I'm obviously curious about many things. And outside the All Creatures podcast, I love when I can learn from other scientists about the world around us.
And that is why I love Curiosity Weekly, because they're exploring some of the other areas that I don't have time to research. You know, things like food science. You know, how does beer and wine ferment? Sleep science. That's something that we should all be interested in. How do we get a good night's sleep? What are sleep scientists doing? Studying things like ASMR?
you know how people's brains are responding and how it helps insomniacs and then things like computer science i am a biologist i understand cellular biology to the whole animal I have no idea how computers work or even my cell phones that are so powerful that we all carry. So these are things that Curiosity Weekly from Discovery are exploring each and every week. I highly suggest you add it.
to your feed, and again, you can listen to Curiosity Weekly wherever you get your podcasts. The world is filled with many questions, such as, did giants exist? What is junk DNA? Does it mean that you're trash? Do you ever wonder if aliens have underwater bases in our oceans? And that's why there are so many UFO sightings off the coasts of islands all over the world.
How serious even is climate change, and when should we start building our rafts? Hello everyone, you may recognize me as Gabby from the History of Everything podcast. And my name is Brenna, and you don't recognize me from anything, yet. Together, we're two scientists who explore the answers to these questions and many, many more in our new podcast, Mystery of Everything, available everywhere you get your podcasts.
Over 7 million different animals inhabit our planet. I love this description. Ready? Big mouth, gnarly teeth, lure bobbing from its head, endless nightmares. Yeah, it is the stuff of nightmares. What can they teach us? It defies logic. We have PhDs in reproductive biology. I've never seen this. I've never seen this in a textbook. Mind blown this week, Chris. Mind blown. Many species are in crisis and need your help.
Welcome to our creatures podcast. This is Chris. And I'm Angie. Okay. Angler fish, Angie. I was telling you, I cannot believe it has taken us 302 episodes. To get to this insane creature. Like insane. Happy Halloween. Yes. I love this description. Ready? Big mouth, gnarly teeth, lure bobbing from its head.
Endless nightmares. Yeah, it is the stuff of nightmares. I mean, it absolutely is. Yes, it's this angry looking deep sea cranky incredible incredible fish that we're covering today it's gonna be so much fun and i agree that i'm surprised it took us this long to cover the angler fish and all of its unique weirdness yeah no and for it i mean Whenever I think of this fish, I always go back to Finding Nemo. Such a great film. I think one of the best that Pixar has ever done.
And that scene where the dad and Dory are at the bottom of the ocean and he's like, oh, look at the bioluminescence of the angler fish, you know, that attracts them. And then you have this. horrific looking fish with these super sharp teeth, which have a purpose. We're going to get to, but I always think of that. Yeah. Yes. Yeah. Another fun description is.
It resembles a nightmarish fang potato with a reading lamp on top. It swims like a potato. I mean, we'll get to that. Yeah, gosh. So fun. So fun. And, and. I would say Angie and I both this week were blown away at the mating strategy. You will not believe this. I cannot believe I've never heard of this. I have a PhD in animal reproduction.
I've never heard of this mating strategy. I didn't know it existed. It is straight up crazy. It's insane. And it's fun. It definitely gives a new meaning to the term love connection. Yes, that's a good way of thinking of it. Okay, okay, okay. Also known as sexual parasitism. There you go, the parasitism part. I'm going to go a very freaky deaky love connection.
And we had some fun jokes about our past with that one. But anyways, before we get going real quick, because there's so much to cover. There's so much physiology that is... so radical, so out of this world. It's just nuts. It's nuts. Well, I mean, it lives in the earth's most inhospitable heptad. I mean.
Yeah, we know more about Mars than we do about the deep ocean. And I'm going to get into that. I'm going to get into that because that's really the deep dive, pun intended, that I did this week. There you go. There you go. You're teaching me. But real quick, thank you, Jill. for joining us on Patreon. Hi, Jill. It's my neighbor, Jill. We go on a lot of long walks with our dogs, and I always bounce ideas off of her. So thank you, longtime listener and friend, Jill. We really appreciate it.
Yes, and thank you so much. We're able to donate proceeds of our Patreon to these organizations. We cover week in, week out, and also the advertising revenue that's kicking in now. So for those that noticed, we are running ads. Now, the purpose we decided to do that was that way we're able to kick some money back to these organizations because what they're doing is so important to protect these species.
Angie and I have been doing this for now almost four years, and we believe in this. We believe in fighting for these animals and telling these stories, so thank you. Okay, now I think the fun part, I... literally when i was doing my slides i was laughing and i and i always tell you oh good luck describing this species oh good luck describing this no out of all the species we covered unless you can see a picture of this thing
I don't know how you describe this. I know. Honestly, I mean, besides saying- Angry looking, not attractive, big mouth, gnarly teeth. It's very, very, very unique. To be a little bit more professional about it, I will attempt to describe the anglerfish just for, I guess, kicks and giggles and to give you a visual if you're out there driving or on a run and you're not able to Google this thing.
And just a quick little sidebar is there are over 300 species of the anglerfish. And Chris and I are going to be talking a lot in general about them because they do just have this wide range. Their colors are typically going to be from dark gray to dark brown because they live... Deep in the water. And they're usually scaleless. And the body shape of the anglerfish is going to basically depend on where it lives. So if it lives in the pelagic zone, which is away from the seafloor.
versus the benthic zone, which is close to the seafloor, they're going to have a little bit different body shape. But I'll focus a little bit more on the benthic because I think that's more the classic where if you just Google an anglerfish, it's going to pop up as this big round body. with huge heads and with this giant mouth, it's like crescent shaped that basically extends like half of the circumference of the head.
Inside this huge mouth are enormous teeth that are long and sharp and translucent. They look like fangs and then they also angle inward. which is really helpful for them grabbing prey. We'll talk about that nutrition. And the length of the teeth will vary depending on the species. They can be one to two inches, up to seven inches. And then, of course, the most famous feature of the anglerfish, which it's named after.
is this modified fin ray, which is also known as the ilium or the esca, which is thin and long and narrow and juts out from the center of their head. like a fishing pole, and it's used to lure prey. And on the end of it is tissue that looks like... prey or bait or lure that they use to attract their food. And in several species of these anglerfish, especially the ones that live very down deep, deep, deep, deep down, will have bile.
luminescence on the tip of this Esca, on the tip of their pole, basically. And it's like, yeah, it's like a fleshy growth. And it just... And they can move it. So this fishing pole that's sticking out their forehead, if you will, can move up and down in different ways to basically. act as though it's prey that's moving to attract other predators, which then they eat. So pretty incredible.
It looks like a swimming mouth. I mean, that's all it is. Yes. Yes. It's definitely. I mean, the pictures, like I said, I'm not really doing justice, but the mouth is like.
a quarter of this thing right like if you picture like a circle and you take a whole quarter out that's its mouth with these teeth and then of course little eyes and then you know they have their uh pectoral and tail fins But small eyes and then this just such unique, this fishing pole in the middle of their head, right between their eyes, basically.
It's just so silly. It looks like a tablin. Yeah, there you go. It's Happy Halloween. I mean, it's the perfect Halloween species. And I'll make an admission. I normally don't watch lots of videos of the species we do. I just read as well. much as I can and source all the information that we put out.
But this one, I had to watch videos of it. I just – I absolutely had to. I was fascinated. Yes. Well, Xander and I spent a lot of time watching some videos this weekend because he was really impressed too. Some of the really amazing videos that were put out, I think by – Noah? Yeah, Noah was one of them, yeah. They show pictures of this anglerfish that has these long, besides, of course, the ileum in the middle of their forehead.
But scientists were really surprised that they also had all these dazzling long filament sticking out from all of their bodies. Almost like a... a jellyfish wood or something. And because a lot of the specimen that have been studied throughout the past couple hundred years are ones that have washed up on the beach. And a lot of these dead specimens don't.
have these filaments. And so scientists believe that some of these might also bioluminesce to attract more prey species over and or mates, which we'll talk a lot about that too when we get to read. reproduction how the bioluminescence can help attract mates as well yeah i mean it's it and across the species i mean it's just they're fascinating and like you know the ones on the continental shelf that aren't the deep deep ones when you were talking about the the
So what is it called again? It's called the Ilseum. Il-i-seum. Illyceum. Okay. So the ones that live on the continental shelf, they don't bioluminesce, but they had them look like little worms. And they all have different structures to fish. And they sit there and they blend in. And then they're using these little...
uh fishing poles you know per se these natural fishing poles to get something up close and then they just open that massive mouth which we're going to get to and talk about hunting so you have to look at pictures i know everybody can probably imagine what they've seen it if they've seen the movie nemo or they know what kind of fish we're talking about but these things are crazy and now the sizes across the species you do get some that are only eight inches long or 20 centimeters
But some of them can be up to four feet long or 1.2 meters, weighing upwards of 110 pounds or 50 kilograms. So they can get big depending on the species. Now, what's funny, this still blows me away with the reproduction. Many of the deep sea anglerfish, so talk about sexual dimorphism. The males are...
Ten times smaller than the females. And the scientist, I was reading his notes. He said they have no other function than to reproduce. That's it. Yes, they don't have all the... They don't have the... Elysium or some of the even the decorative filaments. They don't have, I mean, they're just like the most simple fish. Yeah, some of them don't even have teeth. Some of them don't eat. Yes. And we'll focus on that when we get to the male reproductive biology of the anglerfish.
It's crazy. It's crazy. It's the most insane one we've covered yet. By far. By far. That's the most insane reproductive strategy. We'll be talking about this for the next 300 episodes. Totally. Yeah. Now. You know, some of them live on the continental shelves, but a lot of them live in the deep sea. You're going to find these fish in every ocean. up into near the arctic and just north of antarctic so they're not in the frozen frozen sea or close to the you know the antarctic shelf or anything
But most every other ocean from the equator down my neck is way south of me in New Zealand, way north of you, upwards around Greenland. I mean, you're going to find anglerfish everywhere. Everywhere. But even the ones that are hanging out around the equator, they're so deep that it's very cold where they're at. No dark, no light. So they do well in the cold.
Yeah, it's really fascinating that they're all over, right? They're a very cosmopolitan species. And ancient, but we will get there. We will get there now. why care about anglerfish i'm just saying not only because they're ancient but they they're radical like even the paper you just recently sent me about some of the uh the immunology and we'll get to that i guess when we get to repro
There's so much we can learn from them. Oh, yeah, Chris. There's so many mysteries that the anglerfish has yet to show us and that we can learn about how they survive in such deep... cold water, no light, how they bioluminesce, which is different. We'll talk a lot about bioluminescence today because you can either create it yourself through an enzyme like a firefly does, or you can have bacteria. create it which is actually what the
anglerfish does. And so different methods, a lot to learn from their bioluminescence, a lot to learn about their immunoreproductive biology and how they're able to do this wacky reproductive strategy. Very unique love connection. Literally, they connect. So, yeah, just such a – so cool. But the other thing, too, that we don't really ever talk about on this show that often is that –
The anglerfish can host up to 50 different parasites at a time. And it includes larvas to also mature species. And when you think about a species that lives where it's super... inhospitable and not a lot of other species live, they do create a home for some of these other organisms to live out. on and live off of and things like that. I think we don't know a ton about the role that they play because they are so understudied.
And I know you're chomping at the bit to talk about why it's easier to travel to space than it is to the midnight zone or the actual, I think it's actually the asbismal. zone is where they live right deep deep deep so we're talking a thousand meters plus that's the midnight zone and then the abysmal zone is four thousand meters so
Yeah, I mean, that's just, it's incredible. And we're probably not going to be able to give it a good enough description unless you either like pull up a map of it or watch some of these YouTube clips as Chris was talking about. So that's why I care because it's just, there's a lot to learn about this super underexplored area. And it is an area that although it's underexplored, it sometimes is. still torn up by different types of deep sea trawling.
Yeah. And deep sea mining and things like that. So although it's not a well-studied area, I think it's one that we should definitely pay attention to on this podcast. Yeah, no, we should look more into it for sure. And I think we need to do some more species if we can, just going deep, deep in the ocean. I mean, there's estimates that... About 90% of the oceanic species are still not identified. What?
90%? 90%. So I was on NASA's website. I was on the NOAA website. So these are all based in the United States, right? NASA and NOAA and some of the top leading scientists. scientific discovery, you know, not only the planet earth, but beyond. And right now, NASA is saying about 80% of the sea floors unmapped and unexplored. 80%. Yeah.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. So they're saying even with all the technology that we have, I mean, we have satellites, right? But again, that's not going deep ocean. We have buoys. We now have underwater vehicles. I'm going to talk about exploration of like the Mariana Trench. So we do have some idea, but NASA says we have better maps of the surface of Mars and the moon.
Than we do of the bottom of the ocean. That we know very, very, very little about the ocean. That's astonishing. Wow. Yeah. And about 93% of the ocean is the deep sea. Right. Right. So there's a lot that we don't know, know under there. And, you know, NASA's actually, I mean, they're, they are help funding some science. in the oceans especially with climate change and studying that but you know they they put it as like for us you know terrestrial animals
We're on this thin layer of soil and mountains and stuff that we live on. But 99% of the living space on the planet is the oceans, is the world's oceans. We just don't see it because we live on land. and digging a little bit deeper like because i was i was curious because you always hear it like oh we know more about mars than we do about the deep ocean and that's actually true because it's easier
to send humans to space than in the deep oceans because of the pressure of the ocean. So that's right, Doug. I went down a little bit of a rabbit hole with that.
understanding how anglerfish and all these these other animals that we find in the deepest parts of the ocean how they survive it the vacuum space is very easy i know when we went to the moon like the moon lander it was like tin foil almost was the the outer layer of it it was so thin like you could definitely push a pen or a pencil through it they had to be very very careful because they were in the vacuum of space and they didn't need
you know they need protection radiation that's not the capsule i'm talking about the moon lander itself you know anyways traveling in space is much easier it's much easier to support human life than down there So just to give you an idea of the pressure, okay, in the deep oceans, at sea level, we experience 14.7 pounds per square inch on our bodies. Now the fluids in our bodies push back with a similar force, so we don't feel it.
right but all of us that have gone swimming have dived in the water as soon as we go seven eight nine feet down our ears start popping we can start feeling the pressure anybody that that's actually a diver nose, you know, dealing with pressure and all of that. Okay. So for every 33 feet you go down in the ocean, it increases one atmosphere.
One atmosphere is this 14.7 pounds per square inch. So if you go two atmospheres, that's close to 30 pounds per square inch of pressure on your body. So that's 66 feet down in the ocean. Now, the Mariana Trench is 36,000 feet deep or close to 11,000 meters. So you can put the whole Mount Everest in there. And there's still a couple miles above it. Yeah, that could still be a mile under the ocean. You know, that's how deep it is. Yeah. And the pressure.
is 1,071 times the standard atmospheric pressure or 15,700... 50 PSI, which is the biting force of a now crocodile, I think something like that. But basically that's 15,000 pounds or close to eight tons pushing down on you. If the human body. They said like 50 jumbo jets on your chest. So that's why we can't survive down there. And we have...
We've had difficulty making submersibles that could withstand that pressure and not implode. So that's why it's been so hard. But these animals that live there have adapted to it, right? They make it look easy. They're floating around with their little Esca ilseums or their anglers and just long filaments just floating around. And they don't look like pancakes either.
No, no, no. Well, and then it brought up like the sperm whale. When they dive, one of the deepest diving whales. We have to do, was it the beaked whale? They're the ones that go the deepest, but the deepest diving mammal. Sperm whales go up to 7,000 feet deep. That's 212 atmospheres. That's over 3,000 pounds per square inch on them. But we know from covering them many podcasts ago that their lungs collapse, right?
So they're able to push all the air out of their body, heart rate slows way down, metabolism slows way down, and they just dive deep and then use their clicks to find their food. So look at pressures. One of the things that really hamper us. The other is light. Because if we can't see. You know, it's tough to explore these areas where, you know, NASA said in space, you can see forever, right? Just on and on and on and on.
In the deep, deep ocean where there's no sunlight, you can only see maybe a few feet in front of you. But it depends on where you are in the ocean because if there's a lot of sediment, a lot of that light bounces back and it's really tough to see that deep. So the distance sunlight, this is what's interesting too, because this actually has an effect on the amount of food available in these deep zones. There's not a lot.
we would think there was there really isn't it's it's a tough tough tough neighborhood down there it's like you know high desert i you know on land But this euphotic zone, sunlight zone goes down to about 200 meters. And that's about as far as sunlight.
can penetrate and that's where like tuna live and you know some of our shark species things like that a lot of our whale dolphin species live in that zone 200 meters you know and that's 650 feet so we know like the smaller whales and dolphins a lot of fish a lot of life there because there's sunlight so that's where a lot of you know microorganisms krill all of the live there
Okay. Then you go from 200 meters down to 1000 meters in the twilight zone, which I think you were talking about. So the dysphotic zone, and that's where sunlight does leak through, but not a lot. So sometimes swordfish swim through there, squid, shrimp, things like that.
smaller squid but then when you get a thousand meters and deeper and you break you broke it down to the abyss the midnight the abyss and the haddle zone where sunlight does not penetrate this is totally darkness so giant squid anglerfish some of these other species that we're discovering down there who knows what else is living down there that we haven't discovered yet
Exactly, yeah. Yeah, so that makes it really tough. So, you know, really quickly, the good stuff is, and I'm going to bring this home. is exploring the deep sea the mariana trench that's the deepest we can go it was first identified in 1875 the hms challenger they were plumb bobbing they're the ones that measured it that deep or they knew it was deep
And the first exploration was in 1960 in a diving bell that could withstand the pressure. So two explorers went down there, took them five hours to get down to the bottom, and then they came back up.
in a diving bell type apparatus 2012 10 years ago james cameron the famous director who's avatar titanic all of those he dove in challenger 2 that made a big big splash in the media since then it's picked up a lot the deep sea exploration the exploration of the Mariana Trench and some of these deeper parts of the oceans you know the the stuff we're discovering down there I mean you think about it there's no sunlight so where's the energy
Where do these animals get their energy? Because a lot of, you know, the whole life cycle starts with the sun, with plants, phytoplankton, all of that stuff, right? So that's really... scientists are being blown away by what we're discovering down there. I will say MIT is developing a small submersible called the Maku Neo, which costs like 700 USD, you know, US dollars, really cheap.
and has cameras, other scientific equipment. It's actually making other countries be able to explore their coasts and their deep seas more. So there is technology on the way that is... helping us understand the deep sea better. So that's the good news. But hopefully that makes a little sense on why it's so difficult to explore down there and what's going on.
Well, absolutely, Chris. No, I think you did a great job. And the way that I picture it now, if they can make us basically a $700 submarine drone, right, that people up above on a boat can control. It makes it more affordable to be able to start to learn more. I think it's still going to be a slow going process just because of all these factors that you talked about. I mean, even looking for anglerfish videos, there's not a ton of them that are actually recording what this.
what this fish act, their, what their behavior is. And I found a couple studies from, from NOAA, but still in general, we just don't have a lot to deal with, but data knowledge is power. So I think. Maybe the next five to 10 years we will be able to learn more because I do think it's such an important, underexplored, underfunded part of the world.
There's probably a lot of secrets that lie down there. I know they're finding really cool things about some of the creatures and we'll have to cover more of them on the podcast to do our... due diligence but species that are living off of the thermal vents and just some really wacky bizarre for us it seems like out of this world survival strategies yeah yeah
So I do think as biologists and scientists, there is a lot to be learned from how they live down there. And how they survive. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Well, and just to remind the listeners, because we're going to jump into evolution here in a second, these are the creatures that survived the mass extinctions, the most of them.
We're in the deep oceans. It was not, you know, somehow some terrestrial animals did like mammals found a way to survive why the dinosaurs went extinct. But going back to that, that third mass extinction where. almost all life was, was knocked out, you know? Very few, I think it's like 93% of all life on earth was knocked out. It was only in the deep, deep oceans. So these types of animals like anglerfish and their relatives survived.
And then millions of years later, through evolution, other creatures emerged. So there's another reason to care. Exactly. Like they have their evolutionary uniqueness has outlasted. Yeah. Yeah. All right. Before we jump to evolution, let's just take a quick break and we'll be right back. You can spend less time staying in the know about all things gaming and get more time to actually play the games you love with the IGN Daily Update Podcast.
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All right. Welcome back. Evolution is going to be quick because again, it's tough with fish because we can only go off what fossils we find. Some DNA studies, but also when you're talking about a deep, deep sea. creature. Not a lot known. So I'll talk about what we do know. The class is the ray-finned fishes. We've covered this from tuna to seahorses. the actinoteregy, 50% of all vertebrates are ray-finned fishes. Wow. That stat always gets me. It's like 50% of all mammals are like rodents.
But 50% of all vertebrates alive are ray-finned fishes. So the fish actually dominate the planet, classification-wise. The order is the lofia forms. Now, this is anglerfish. We're over 300 species. Now, it depends on what fish you're looking at. I really love this fanfish, sea devils. They are insane looking. There's a very famous photograph of one with the filaments. It went around popular, the media. You can look at it, a sea devil or the fan fish sea devil.
So all the families, genre, and species are going to differ. This one, the family is colifarinidae. The genus is colifarin, and then the species is colifarin pelagica. Pelagica, I think. Anyways, it's a mouthful. There's over 300 species of them. But again, not a lot known. What we do know on fish evolution, we've covered this in some of our other species, the bony fish evolved over 530 million years ago. So that's when...
We had this Cambrian explosion, talked about this, and I think in a shark podcast, where it lasts around 25 million years, where we just see this explosion in life. But again, over 25 million. Not over 25 years or 25,000 years, 25 million. It's a long, long, long time, right? But that's where we saw life on earth really explode.
And the bony fish really 420 million years ago is when they started to radiate out. Okay. And again, I always talk about this. We had fish in our oceans before we even had trees on land. Because trees didn't show up until 385 million years ago. It just boggles the mind. Boggles the mind. Now, through some DNA, mitochondrial DNA analysis, anglerfish, their thinking emerged maybe 130, 100 million years ago.
So that's about all I could find any specifics on when they evolved. So we still don't know a lot, but these are ancient, ancient animals. Not the most ancient that we've covered, but they're up there. They're up there. I'm trying to think, what is the most ancient we've covered? Okay. It was early on, I think. It might have been our first 50 episodes. Vampire Squid?
No, that was one of the deepest we've covered, I think, so far. Think something more basic biology than that. Like just some of the most basic biology we've covered in a species. Doesn't do much. coral well yeah okay you got me there but uh maybe so fun um hold on let me uh let's see do we have any charades can i get a can i get a hint
They dangle. Oh, a jellyfish? Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, the mortal jellyfish. Yeah, yeah. About 700 million years ago is when jellyfish, some of the very first complex life forms. Yeah, they don't have a backbone. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But sharks, I mean, the sharks, the mantis shrimp, pretty old. That's right. Another invertebrate. Yeah, pretty ancient. Mantis shrimp have been around. Those things are amazing, too. So fun.
yeah all right anglerfish surprisingly i was surprised i thought oh this would be short podcast there's not a lot known there's so much biology that we kind of do know about them One of the things I did come up, a scientist that studies them says they can live up to be 30 years. I don't know how they figured that out. Like you said, how they study them. It's not like you can tag them.
I don't know how he came up with that statistics, but I did find that. So maybe 20, 30 years, how long deep sea creatures can survive. They take a long time to sexually mature. Okay. They know. Yeah. So that would make sense. Okay. Okay. Now, bodies are elongated with weak, watery muscles. That was interesting. Well, they don't do much. No. They're not going to win a swim race. No. They definitely are, like you said, a swimming potato or a floating potato because they don't like to burn a lot.
Because think about this. When we talk the physiology of the fish for the listeners, you have this deep part of the ocean. with no sunlight. So their eyes are pretty weak. They don't have really great vision because they don't need it. They do have vision though, because again, they've got to spot that bioluminescence to breed and reproduce.
But you're at this bottom layer where there really is not a lot of available energy, food. There's no light energy. You have some thermal vents, right? But the anglerfish isn't developed. Depending on those, they're depending on whatever they can eat. So they have to be very, very, very careful how they burn energy. Yes, and therefore they don't burn a lot of energy. In fact, their gill ventilation, so that's how they breathe in the water. The genus Lophius has some of the slowest...
ventilation cycles in all fish and it can last more than 90 seconds. So very, very slow to breathe that water in and out. And then... Their movement, they can cover long distances, and we'll talk about that when we get to reproduction. There is some data to suggest out there that a juvenile female anglerfish recorded to move over.
800 kilometers. But a lot of that's basically vertically because after they spawn, they go to the top and then they start to develop into larva and then grow and then they come back down. So it's more ventral movement per se more than like other type of movement. But as the adult anglerfish is hanging out in the midnight or abysmal zone, They move slow. In fact, there's video footage from Monterey, California, filmed with an underwater vehicle. And they watched this.
this anglerfish swim for about 24 minutes. And most of the footage is just of the anglerfish basically drifting, more or less, kind of at an angle. There was a little bit of swimming intermittently, but very, very small short bursts and basically only just to move, just barely beating its pectoral fins. And that was it. It just is just very lethargic looking behavior. And on a different dive, they observed a whip-nosed anglerfish.
showing this swimming upside down behavior. And it's pretty much motionless, but just like upside down, tilted a little bit. Therefore, the Ilyseum or the angler was basically hanging upside down over its mouth. as well and yeah and then even when the um when the vehicle approached because it does have some light on it yeah the fish had a burst of speed to like move from it yeah but it was still swimming upside down that's crazy So, I mean. Yeah, like why?
Yeah, how? Yeah, there's just not a lot of documentation of what they do. Maybe swimming upside down is normal for anglerfish. We just don't have enough data. Now, they did take these scientists by surprise because they had not. seen this yet. So yeah, it's just, there's still a lot to learn, but they're not, they're definitely not.
moving very quickly and probably the only time they move quickly is when they're snapping their jaws shut on some of their prey items okay so to break some of that down swimming upside down one of the things i did read about like especially with the deep sea fish is because we're going to talk about their swim bladders here in a sec and that's what helps fish in the uh the light zones buoyancy
controls up and down right the gases well you can't have gas in a in a swim bladder in the deep sea due to that pressure it would crush it so uh anglerfish don't have swim bladders from what I read. But some fish down there do have swim bladders that contain oil. Okay, so it's a thick viscous fluid, not gas, that helps them go up and down. They do have, however, autoliths, which I think you mentioned this in some sort of podcast about fish.
But that is the ear stones in the ears that helps hearing and vestibular function in fish, their inner ear. That tells them which way is up and down. So for a fish to be swimming upside down, it's not because they can't tell which way is up or down. They're doing it for a reason. They can tell that they're upside down.
Maybe they're just, who knows, hunting strategy maybe? Researchers do not know. And of course, like all good research, it would need to be seen again and repeated and recorded and all that. But just, yeah, just a lot of fun mysteries with these guys still. Yeah, and so when you're talking about them not swimming, the basic biology, right, in basic biology, we need food to power muscles.
So you need nutrients and oxygen to power those muscles. So in a tuna, the fastest fish in the sea, I think it was, super, super fast, always swimming super fast. And they had the red and white mussels. And we talked about that in that episode. Amazing episode. Learned so much about fish in that one. But they're in the lighted zone.
But they're swimming really quick. They're getting a lot of oxygen across their gills. They're eating a lot, so they're getting fat, and that's carrying food to the musculature. Anglerfish. they don't eat often and they don't have a lot of nutrients. So that's why they don't barely move or they don't have to, would you say oxygenate their gills very much because of the energy, right? It's all about energy every day.
You and I are talking about it before we started. I need to lose a little bit of energy in my diet. You stop it. Okay, bye. I saw pictures of you in Fiji. You're doing fine. Yeah, I had fun looking for birds. Now, the other thing about these fish, Angie, that I wanted to talk about before we get to bioluminescence, because I know you're itching to get there, the skeletal structure.
When you look at the skeleton of an anglerfish, like I said, they're all mouth. It depends on the species, obviously, but for most of them, all mouth, all head, a really... curvature weird backbone and then a little bit in their fins they they are just they are like i said like we started the beginning goblin thing of nightmares They're crazy. They have this huge mouse with these teeth. And one thing, you did talk about nutrition and catching prey.
And an underbite, I think, is the way you describe it, that lower jaw, the mandible. Oh, they're just so radical. But the other thing I read about their teeth, Angie, this was really interesting, and I didn't think about this, is... It's like a scientist said it's like spike guards in a parking lot. So their prey can go in but not come out. Definitely can't come out. Yeah, yeah. It was just, oh, it was crazy. Their physiology is just beyond, beyond. Now.
The big part, the bioluminescence. Yes. Yes. So fun. Yes. And actually, just in prepping for this podcast, too, just being reminded that, I mean, so many species bioluminescent, not just this, you know, not necessarily just the anglerfish or the... Firefly, as I mentioned. I mean, there's, I mean... Dozens and dozens of species produce bioluminescence and from bacteria to sponges to worms to jellyfish, crustaceans, squids, sharks, and even.
terrestrial species like fireflies i think they're finding out that the platypus has some of it oh wow and so what it is is it's this convergent evolution and so several different lines of species realize what an awesome... what an awesome benefit it can be depending on where they live and how they catch prey and how they attract mates to have this, this bioluminescence or basically this chemical reaction somewhere inside their body that causes.
light to be produced, right? The photoprotein light. And so, Chris, I was trying to remember back to which species produced bioluminescence that we've covered. And I think... Definitely the vampire squid, which was a long, long time ago, that invertebrate. But the vampire squid, I believe, bioluminesced through its own chemical reaction within its cells.
And what happens is there's this protein called luciferin and another one called luciferase. And when luciferin is oxidized by a catalyst or a specific enzyme that's around, it can produce this photoprotein, which is known as luciferase or light basically. And so a lot of the organisms like the vampire squid have those chemicals themselves within their skin. or within whatever fleshy tissue that they are going to bioluminesce with.
But the anglerfish is different, okay? And so their source of luminescence doesn't come from their own tissues and their own DNA, if you will. It comes from a symbiotic bacteria that hangs out in basically that... the tip, the fleshy part of the Esca or the Ilseum and just hangs out in there. And these bacteria have the certain...
crystals that contain, researchers think they contain guanine, the amino acid guanine, and have their own reaction inside of their own bodies. And so inside the bacteria and the bacteria then. hangs out in the tissue of the anglerfish. And so it's super fascinating because what the researchers are starting to explore, and they've really known so little about this because as we mentioned early,
earlier that the anglerfish are so hard to study. And a lot of times they're just looking at samples that have washed up on shore. But the anglerfish cannot produce light on their own. They cannot bioluminesce. It's this bacteria. But what's really been making the scientists scratch their heads for a long, long time is basically... how they get this bacteria. So are they born with this bacteria or are the bacteria in the ocean swimming around? And so far the answer is...
they think is no. Like when they sample water down there, they're not finding these bioluminescent bacteria. They're only finding it inside of the ESCA or the angler. part of the angelfish. But it's really puzzling is that as the anglerfish are growing into adulthood, they don't have the ability to buy a luminesce. they don't think they have the bacteria then, or they're not sure. And so what they've, the most recent studies from 2022, I believe, have shown that they...
are able to acquire bacteria later in life. And the end of the escha or the ischium has little pores in it, the tissue down there. And so researchers think that maybe some fish that are adults will like spew out the bacteria when they're breeding maybe. And then that way when... juveniles are coming into adult age and starting to need these, uh, photo, these bioluminescent bacteria that then they somehow take them in and then.
they use them from there. But why they're not able to find any in the open water, they don't know. But as you mentioned, there's so much we don't know about. down there as far as species being explored. What'd you say? Like, I mean, 90, we still have 90% of species. So it might just be that they haven't actually been able to sample in the water or around, and they've just only found it in these adult anglerfish.
But without it, the anglerfish could not bioluminesce because the bacterias are the ones doing it. So it's this very symbiotic, happy... Happy bacteria. And they think that, of course, basically the anglerfish is providing a nice tissue home, source of food and all that for... source of energy and what the bacteria needs to just hang out there and be happy underwater.
Yeah, it's like what came first, the chicken or the egg? I mean, when you start really thinking about it, you understand biology, you're like, where did this bacteria come from? I know. And there was multiple papers. I'm basically giving you a synopsis of multiple papers of different ways they've... studied this and tried to figure it out in different genomes they've sequenced. And yeah, it's really, it's just, it's a really fun puzzle.
Well, yeah, it's fascinating, right? Science, it's crazy. It is. Biology is insane. This fish is just crazy. Now, okay, so a lot of the behavior is their hunting behavior. So, you know, I'm going to let you... a pint about about that but before we get there i think we should take just another quick break and then we'll bring this home do you find it hard to sleep at night
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and stories. So if you want to listen to A Beautiful Soundscape tonight, search for Calm Cove on Apple Podcasts or Spotify and see how we're helping millions of people relax and go to sleep. Every night. All right. Welcome back. So the anglerfish, what we do know, very few predators just because not finding humans. Yes, humans are one, but they've been found in some stomachs of some fish, but not very common. And again, they live very, very deep. Now, we know these are predators of the deep.
They're ambush predators, so they really use that angle, angler, or whatever. What is it? It'll see up again. Yeah, Ilseum or Esca. Okay, the Esca. Now, this is the deep sea ones. The ones on the continental shelf will sit and wait and just wiggle that thing. If you watch some of the videos that they have of them online, they're really cool.
use it like a little worm but the deep ones with that bacteria that's illuminating and they're using it back and forth like angie said to lure fish they eat almost anything they can get which is crazy because their stomachs are, they can eat prey almost the same size as them. Yes. Twice as large. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, it's insane. They're like all stomach and mouth. And besides the freeloading males, it was a funny comment from a scientist, you know, because the parasitic mating, but the females.
have these massive bulging stomachs. But what's interesting is they lure them in, Angie, and they have the fastest sucking... prey air suction that they've measured in any fish which is 0.006 seconds so it's called suction feeding the angler fish is the king they have the fastest in the world I know when we talked about mantis shrimp and what they can do, these wines, they open their mouths so quickly and the fish has no chance.
The eel, well, I don't even know eel, but the squid or whatever they eat, just boom. And it's in their stomach or in their mouth. They close that mouth. They can't get out. And then they swallow it. It's just... It's just nuts. It's just nuts. So fun. Yeah, I mean, I was reading they, of course, have fish, but lobster, shrimp. other invertebrates, cod. They've found seabirds in their stomach. I mean, just all sorts of, like anything, really. They're definitely a carnivore, that's for sure.
But also several specimen have washed up on shore with nothing in their stomach. So that suggests that there might be certain months or times a year where they're not feeding that much, depending on where they live and how deep they live. All right. So leading to other behaviors into this reproductive behavior, which is insane. What do we know?
Wow. Well, so one of my favorite titles for talking about the sexual parotism of the anglerfish is first and foremost, the anglerfish is the only creature that's been thus... identified that is known to mate in this sexual parasitism way that I'm going to talk about here. So that's another reason why to care and we'll talk about. that uh but one title was evolution turn this fish into a penis with a heart that was one title from an article i don't know i can't remember which which um
which science magazine it was from, but it really made me crack up. And so. Well, yeah, it's, I read like, you know, watching some of the specials on it and the research that it's just basically. They end up being just a pair of gonads that are providing the marigamites. Yes, I think it was a famous biologist, Stephen Jay Gould, which I studied a lot. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah.
in zoology many years ago but yeah i think he's the one that coined it a penis with a heart the male the male fish so funny but i mean to back it up a little bit is And so to explain how this is done, this sexual parasitism in the anglerfish is... Keep in mind that there's over 300 species of anglerfish, and they've really only identified about 25 species to engage in this sexual parasitism.
What ends up happening is, as Chris mentioned in the beginning of the podcast, the males are super small, like a fraction of the size of females. For so many years, hundreds of years when anglerfish had been identified because they'd washed up on shore, the biologists classifying them at the time just thought that it was some type of little parasite that they had. on them. And then finally, they realize that they're only...
having female specimens wash up and they didn't understand where the males were. And I think it was in the early 1900s, a biologist finally realized from one of these specimens that that was not a parasite. That was actually the male fish that was attached to the female. And so what they've learned in the past 100 years about this breeding strategy with these species of anglerfish is what happens is this...
male is born. And a lot of these males don't really have teeth. They don't eat any food. They literally, once they grow big enough, they just start swimming and searching around for a female.
anglerfish. And researchers think that they use, they have a really good sense of taste and chemoreception. And so the female adult anglerfish is putting out pheromones into the water. And if a male is lucky enough to find that scent, that trail, and then of course use his eyes that are poorly developed, but still use his eyes to see her bioluminesce, he can basically find a female. And it's estimated that for anglerfish, that only 1% of males that are hatched actually find a female.
So these poor guys, they swim their whole life. And a lot of them end up just like 99% of male angler fish that utilize sexual parasitism. die not eating a meal because they never found the female to share with them. So it's just crazy. But what happens is they swim around and then if he is lucky enough, he's if he's that 1%. of a male that can find a female of the same species, it can't be a different species obviously, the young male will bite on to the female with his sharp teeth.
And then once he bites onto the female. It's really fascinating, but he actually has special enzymes in his mouth that can start to dissolve the tissue. The enzyme will keep eating away at the female's tissue basically until it reaches the blood vessel level. And then this is where this love connection comes in, where the male and female become physically connected.
at the circulatory level. So they start to have a shared circulatory system. It's like he dissolves, right? He dissolves into her and connects. It's insane. It's so nuts. Once their circulatory systems fuse, the female will provide him with nutrients that he needs to survive. basically is a parasite and just steals nutrients through the circulate, shared circulatory system. Uh, and he will stay attached to her potentially for years. And while he's attached to her,
He doesn't have to worry about swimming or seeing or eating or anything else that a normal fish has. So all those body parts, he doesn't need anymore. Some of the fins, the eyes, the internal organs, they basically atrophy, right? So they wither away until basically he's just this little lump of flesh hanging from the female. taking food from her. He does keep his gills, so I guess he is oxygenating himself, theoretically. He basically becomes testes and gills and hangs out there.
And the testes are there to produce sperm whenever she spawns. So gills and testes, right? It defies logic. We have PhDs in reproductive biology. I've never seen this. I've never seen this in a textbook. I've... Mind blown this week, Chris. Mind blown. Every species we've covered. There's always something like, oh, this is so cool. I would have never in my life would have guessed this as a mating strategy for some sort of, you know, okay, worms or...
Anthropods or some of these insects, I don't know. That's beyond me sometimes. And I know there's some cool mating stuff with there and whatnot. For a fish, a vertebrate, a more complex organism, to do something like this.
is insane it's insane it's beyond it's crazy and i have so many questions i had so many questions about it and i'll probably only be able to answer a couple uh for the audience because i'm still learning about this and i just i mean i know i know what my reading will look like for the next
couple of weeks. But it's just fascinating. And I mean, there's different strategies. Once again, this is just about 25 of the species. There are other species that the male will only attach for a little while. But he won't fully, he'll just bite onto her and hang out for a while. He won't actually, their circulatory systems won't fuse. Fuse, yeah. And then he'll, after spawning, he'll like let go. And so.
I mean, I have a lot of questions about it, but the number one is like, well, why? And why evolve the strategy? It seems... pretty dramatic and taxing um taxing for the female to carry around the male right and uh because she's also if you think about it she's Keeping this little wormy male alive. It isn't just one, right? It isn't just one. Correct. Let's add that to what you're saying.
There isn't just one male, right? There's more than one. There's been reports of up to eight. One female was captured, I believe, having eight males fused to her. Okay. Now go through swimming with eight males. was connected to you. No, thank you. And then not only the eight males, but a female that is spawning spends a lot of... her energy and a lot of her body size producing her eggs, right? So she's putting a lot of...
a lot to these males and her children. I mean, she is just, it's amazing that she can have enough nutrition to stay alive her own self with these parasites, basically, right? Because we always joke that... embryos growing into fetuses are somewhat of an alien parasitite, right? Taking the mother's nutrition. And so, granted, it's not parasitism in this sense, but...
In some ways it is. And so just super fascinating. And so that, and so why I think the researchers have, have theorized that the benefit that the female's getting is that. Whenever she does spawn and lays her eggs, fish reproduce with external fertilization, right? Like the female lays the eggs and then the male releases his sperm and then... The magic of life happens externally outside of the fish's body. Some sharks do internal, right? We've covered some of that.
Yeah, but it's not technically. I mean, there's like cloaca to cloaca. But he's basically added a sperm ball in her, I believe. But it's not like a uterus or something. Correct. Yes. Right. But yes, but some species of shark definitely give live birth. So the embryos develop inside the female shark.
and then hatch and come out as like whole sharks, which is a great strategy to keep her babies alive longer because we all know that the eggs, even after they're fertilized, I mean, a huge percent of those are gobbled up.
by predators right yeah finding nemo from the beginning it's the very beginning of the movie so and yeah so the researchers speculate that basically it's so hard in these deep dark waters it's so hard for male and female to find each other anyways because they can't see each other and it's so spread out and so deep that if they're lucky enough to find each other that
The male just attaches, so his sperm is there whenever she spawns, whenever she needs it. And for her, yes, it's a parasitic loss because she's giving him some of her own nutrients, and it's hard to find food down there, as we mentioned. But the trade-off is that when she does spawn, her eggs, when she does spawn, have basically sperm laying waiting right there. And they think that... When a female is ready to spawn, her hormones will change inside of her body, gearing up to spawn.
lay those eggs, release those eggs. And so because they are fused with the circulatory system, right, together, the male and the female, that her change in hormones, depending on whether it's... She spawns seasonally or researchers still don't know with all the different species how they spawn. There's spawning patterns. But that the hormones in her body talk to the hormones in his body because he will release. He has one job, for goodness sakes. He has one job, literally. Yep.
And so when it is go time and those eggs or ova have been released by the female, he has to release his sperm at the same time. And researchers, I think, have documented that and know that... the male is able to do that. And so they think it must be some hormone communication between these few species, which I guess that would be a benefit, right?
So that is the like why they do it. But I dove a little bit deeper into the how they do that. Because Chris and I, during our tenure at UF and just wanting to know more about. reproduction and reproductive immunology. Chris had a huge interest in that and studying basically and how the mom doesn't basically reject. The fetus. Because the fetus is going to have a different immune system than the mom. And so technically, we were all born with this immune system to...
attack anything that's foreign. Anything that has foreign DNA or RNA, viruses, bacteria, think about that, that are innate and then our adaptive immune system kick into gear. And so there's a whole bunch of really cool reproductive immune factors that go into how, and for vertebrates and land mammals and how they, and. how they don't reject their own fetuses. And so a lot of that has to do with the MHC is a major histocompatibility complexes.
Just a whole bunch of science behind that that is really, really cool. And Chris dove really deep. I remember we were working on a review paper for it. So that's what got me thinking about, well, how the heck.
can a male, how can a male latch on and share blood with a female when he has a totally different immunogenetics, right? Because if we think about it too, if you think about like, When people are donated another organ or a donor or a skin graft, those matches have to be put together really, really, really carefully. So the person that's receiving the organ or the skin graft or whatever does not reject it. Yeah, so we can learn, again, we can learn a lot from this fish, right?
I mean, and it goes back to a couple weeks ago. I mean, again, that's why I got into the whole mammoth cloning thing and trying to identify recipients. But yeah, so technically she should reject these males. Like they should not be. She's not related to them. Right. They should not be sharing blood. No.
No, no, not at all. And so it's fascinated researchers. And so there is a lot of, there's a fair amount of research into this because we do have so much that we could potentially learn from it for our own biomedicine. just in general i mean it's just it's incredible and it's it's never been seen before in the animal kingdom they're the only ones that do this that we know of to such
intense levels. Or as we mentioned with eight males. I mean, it's one thing to figure out how to work with one male. I live with one, but eight. You have three little ones that are happy. Forget about it. Oh my gosh. But at least, you know, so at least, yeah. I share genetics with them. So, yeah, it's just so fascinating. And there was recently a study produced in the journal Science, which is that goes to show you it's a very top tier journal. And so in this new study.
Researchers analyzed the genomes of 10 different species of anglerfish, including those that fuse permanently, where the male and female stay fused indefinitely. compared to ones that only partially fuse. And what they found is fascinating. And so in the species of anglerfish where they permanently fuse, like the female, the eight males fuse to her. swimming around, poor thing, that there is a whole part of their immune system basically lacking.
And so it just blew these researchers' minds because what they found is that their adaptive immunity, or the one that they acquire over time, was pretty much gone. And what instead is they had a beefed up innate immune system. And so just for our listeners out there is like... In general, immunologists classify our immune system into the innate immune system, which you're born with. And that is going to protect you from...
definitely different microbes and things that can affect like your skin and your gut and your mucous membranes. And it's really fast acting and it's just, it'll pretty much attack anything foreign in your body. whereas the adaptive immune system is a second layer of defense. You're not born with it. You have to acquire it over time. It includes like the B and T cells or the... antibodies, and it's specific. So it targets specific viruses and specific bacterias.
basically how vaccines work. So it's trained. It's slower to respond. In humans, it doesn't respond for a couple of days typically, but it learns. And so... What the researchers are finding with these anglerfish where the male fuses to the female is this the second layer of defense, this adaptive immune system. B and T cells, the genes for that in these fish are pretty much lacking.
Yeah, I mean, it makes sense. Think about it. If they did have one that was developing a more robust immune system, it would reject the males and they couldn't breed. Right. prehistoric i don't know or just very basic yeah yeah and i mean in the innate immune system does it does contain a lot of white blood cells that are are known to once again just pretty much attack anything that uh
That it doesn't get along with. So how the female's body is still not at least the innate, her innate immune system is not necessarily attacking the males. They don't fully understand that. But in the same instance, she doesn't have all these multiple, multiple layers. And so that's probably allowing him to be there in some way, shape or form. But still a lot that they don't know. Just seeing that was very shocking.
But then also seeing that they had a beefed up innate immune system, right? I mean, that's fascinating how they changed that. And so we're still at the very beginning of learning about this, which I hope in the next year. 10 years, we'll learn a lot more about it in some ways, shapes and form might be able to help us humans in our biomedical journey with some of these organ donors and just learning more about the science of... the immune system and immune response and yeah it's just it's it's
Crazy. It's crazy. Yeah. And that's how you write research grants and get funded and go out in the big deep ocean. So any of our listeners looking for a career, there you go. I mean, going out there, exploring things like that, that you will find. research money if it applies to people. So yeah. Yeah. Well, yeah, exactly. Really. I mean, it's really exciting. I was excited to see that many papers about that. I know we need to protect our, the bottoms, the deep.
deep, dark bottoms of our oceans better. We'll talk more of that when we get to conservation. But it is hopeful that, yeah, there would be some interest and some funding in there and not just people that are going down to look for... places to mine yeah but actually researchers or at least maybe even pairing up uh worst case scenario all right so we get the males we understand how they kind of work now eggs what do we do we know anything how many
spawning, all that stuff. Well, yeah, Chris, there's still a lot to learn, but what we do know in general is because the male is attached to the female, or even in species where he's not, he is prepared year-round to breed. where the females' ovaries only produce eggs typically in November to May, depending on where they live. But in general, spawning is not really well described. It is external, like I said.
And it is pretty cool when a female anglerfish, when she produces her eggs, they're pretty big and they're buoyant and they are in this long veiled gelatinous ribbon. And this ribbon of eggs can be really long and it's also translucent. And so the eggs are kept basically... protected in this gelatinous coating, this ribbon, researchers think that it might be toxic or just tasteful to predators. So they think that that will help them.
And the exact number of eggs is unknown, but researchers estimate anywhere from 300,000 to close to 3 million eggs. And this string, this gelatinous string ribbon that's a couple meters long. So really pretty, a sight to be seen. Yeah. And then, of course, the male's there. And so he is going to have his sperm should fertilize the eggs. And there was one researcher that collected a ribbon of about 50 fertilized eggs and was able to.
grow them in a lab for a little over a week. But it's estimated that after fertilization, Because it's so cold and so slow moving down there that basically it can take three weeks or so. for basically the eggs to develop into larval and basically hatch. And that also the ribbon floats slowly to the top of the water. As well. And assuming that they're not eaten along the way or stuff like that, that then the.
the small larval fish will hatch and they're up at the top of the water. And it's estimated that the little fish grow. around 13.6 centimeters per year. So they're pretty slow growing. And then they have to make their way back down to where they, you know, depending on which species they are, how deep. into the ocean they go to live their adult life. But for sexual maturity in anglerfish, males are going to be around six years old and females are going to be about 14 years old.
And it's all based on size. So the faster they grow, if there's more food. theoretically, the faster they sexually mature. So these are ranges, but it's all based on their length. And so it takes them, they're very slow growing, especially down in those depths with not a lot of food in the cold water, cold, dark water. And so. It takes them a while to mature. And then I guess if you're a male of one of these sexual parasitic types of species.
I couldn't find any data on if they're swimming around not eating for six years or if they find a female sooner than that. I'm not sure how long it takes their testes to develop. still lots of questions yeah lots of them yeah fascinating no it's This fish. It's incredible. This is so incredible. I know. I really didn't think this podcast would go this long. I did not.
but the more I dug into it. Have you not met you and I? No, but the more I dove deeper and deeper. Oh yeah, it's so fun. We pick a species and then we go and look at the literature and we go to the different... information sites that we use and all those things and you know you dig on some species and there's just not a lot there and and we we you know to come up with a podcast we we come up with you know we get as much information as we can
On this one, I thought, oh, no way. It's such a deep sea fish. But wow, the stuff we do know, I would love to learn how they learned it. But it opens up all these other doors of scientific inquiry. All right. So conservation, don't know of any angler fish that are endangered, but the scientists said that doesn't mean they can't be. We don't know. Again. Like I've laid out in the beginning, we don't know a lot about the deep ocean.
Definitely climate change is a threat to these fish. It's increasing ocean stratification. So that means the surface water isn't mixing with the deep ocean. So less oxygen is making it down there. That is a major, major concern. concern. We do know overfishing is having a negative effect across the ocean and up and down the food chain or up and down the food or all throughout the food webs. Ocean acidification.
But really, these low oxygen zones in the ocean are really what is concerning scientists in those deep sea food webs. And if the deep sea goes... or species can't survive down there then we are in deep deep deep trouble you know it affects all the species from the deep all the way to the surface so again you know tip of the week you know
Go back to Plastic Free July. Go back to reducing our carbon footprints. It's the same story throughout. But any organizations out there, I imagine there isn't an anglerfish. conservation society or something but there is a lot of good work going on in the oceans there isn't to my knowledge but maybe one of our listeners or create one or a fan page or something these guys are just really amazing. And we need to get their pictures circulating more on social media and definitely get there.
their name and their biology. We need to be talking about sexual parentism at Thanksgiving over the holidays. There we go. There we go. It's so fascinating, right? I know. Anyways, but I did find a group called the Deep Sea Conservation Coalition, and they can be found at www.savethehighseas.org. And we'll put it on our show notes, of course.
Conservation Coalition, also known as the DSCC, was founded in 2004 in response to international concerns over the harmful impacts of deep sea bottom trawling. And so as we were talking about a little bit earlier, and so this conservation group. Today includes over 100 non-government organizations, fish organizations, law and policy institutes worldwide who work together basically under the umbrella of the DSCC to protect these deep sea vulnerable.
vulnerable ecosystems. And their main goals are to substantially reduce the great threats to life in these deep sea places and to safeguard the long-term health. integrity and resilience of these deep sea ecosystems that we don't even know a lot about. And so they have several initiatives that they're working on. Of course, a big one is protecting these high sea. from bottom trawling and, of course, protecting some of these species down there from the impacts of bottom fishing.
And working with international governments and policy workers and scientists to get this done. check out their website at save the high seas.org. Uh, you can also follow them on Instagram and they have a nice Facebook page, which I think I sent you the link earlier, Chris. Yes, I know.
About New Zealand. I know. I'll have to dig into that. We're usually leading the world in a lot of green policy, but that one... it was a little concerning the deep sea trawling and yeah they're one of the only ones that are allowing it in the south pacific yeah
yeah so yeah but that's what the deep sea conservation coalition is all about helping educate us and then also doing doing the work that needs to be done that we did Basically, until I did this podcast, I wasn't really educated on bottom. Bottom trawling or sea mine exploring and stuff like that. And I didn't know these creatures lived down there. And I definitely didn't know that the oceans had 90% of species probably still to identify.
I'm in love with this midnight zone. And I hope this podcast helped get everyone excited about it. And definitely, definitely check out Deep Sea Conservation Coalition or www.savethehighseas.org. Well, I think we're definitely going to be coming back in a while, but we're definitely coming back to the deep sea because there are some amazing creatures down there. And I think we need to learn more about, like I could see doing the giant squid soon. So there's a hint.
one species before we wait for Plastic Free July because that's where we go nuts on the deep or on the oceans. But Angie, great work this week. It was a fun, fun species to investigate. I hope the listeners really enjoyed and learning. Please keep those emails coming, comments on social media. If there's species, you know, you want us to do, please.
Email us, contact us. Please always check out Patreon. You're helping to give back. That's five bucks a month. That's a coffee at Starbucks. Starbucks was probably right. Prices are going up. So less than a Starbucks cup of coffee. But thank you so much for listening and sharing and caring. Thank you, everyone. Happy Halloween. Listen, learn, share. Join the movement at allcreaturespod.com.